All posts by kleucht

Activities, Travel, Vacations, Nature, Photography, Videos, Science, Space, Technology

2009 Daytona 500 NASCAR Race

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Well, it was a long and hard day, but it was totally worth it!  What a great experience it was to attend the Daytona 500 race in person and to be able to see and hear and smell and experience it firsthand.  Below is a short 3 minute video on YouTube that I created from short video clips on my digital camera.

Being in the pre-race show (http://www.leucht.com/blog/2009/02/daytona-500-pre-race-show-practice-day/), I had to arrive in the parking lot at 7:30am and check in at the infield pre-race compound at 8am.  They fed us some pre-packaged muffins for breakfast and set us loose in the infield and told us to come back at noon.  So we basically had almost 4 hours to walk around and be tourists.  I checked out the Fan Zone and the pit area and then I suddenly found myself on Fox & Friends After the Show Show (http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?maven_referralObject=3606113).  There were lots of reporters running around interviewing people before the race.

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I was able to look into some of the garages while the crews were preparing their cars for the race.  [Click on any of the photos for higher resolution versions.]

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The fans could also view the inspection area where cars were getting weighed and measured and inspected thoroughly to make sure they were following the NASCAR rules.

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While I was milling around, they let the Fan Zone crowd out onto the track and onto the grass between the pits and the grandstands.  That was really cool.  The track is banked at 31 degrees there at the finish line, which is pretty impressive when you’re right there trying to walk up and down it.

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Also, fans were allowed to sign the Start/Finish line.

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I didn’t do a great job signing my name.  The bumpy asphalt was pretty hard to write on.

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One stretch of pit road was open for fans to walk around and look at the pit boxes and equipment.  Here is a photo of Jimmie Johnson’s (Team Lowe’s Racing) pit area.

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Here is a photo of some of the Team Lowe’s pit tools.  These were on the side facing the car … there were more tools on the opposite side too.

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Here is a photo of the back side of the pit box of Dale Earnhardt Jr.  You can see they’ve got all the tires laid out and marked as to where they go on the car.

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Back in the Fan Zone, fans got to ask Elliott Sadler questions before the race.

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Time went pretty fast with all the activities and such. Then it was time to line up and get ready for the pre-race show at 2:30pm.  There were about 1500 volunteer “performers” in this show.  Most of the choreography involved simply walking from spot to spot and unfurling a banner.  Pretty simple stuff.  Here’s a photo of me waiting for the word to walk out onto the field.

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I took this photo during the finale of the show.

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I snapped this photo of Keith Urban during the pre-race show.  He’s in a yellow t-shirt standing on a little mini-stage in the middle of the crowd.

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About an hour after the pre-race show, the race actually started.  Took a while to remove the stage and clean up everything.  Here’s a photo of the leaderboard and jumbotron as the race was starting.

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I watched most of the race from the pit area.  It was pretty exciting and full of activity.

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At one point in the race, Jeff Gordon was having some sort of trouble and people started passing him.  He came in for a pit stop…

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… and his tires were in pretty bad shape.  You could see bubbling and the tread was starting to come off.

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Another shot of the old tires.

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Tom Cruise attended the race and watched it from Jeff Gordon’s pit box.

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The Cheerios team getting ready for the next pit stop.

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This picture shows a pit crew member measuring and recording the tread thickness across the face of a used tire.

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I went up and down the pits all evening, but decided that this was the view of the race that I liked the best.

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Soon after I snapped the above photo, it started sprinkling. Soon after that, the race was stopped and then eventually the race was called due to the rain. After the race was over and everyone was packing up, I caught Tony Stewart in his pit.

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An emotional Matt Kenseth won the race by being in first place when the race was red flagged and then called due to rain.

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After the winners circle ceremony I snapped this photo of the winner, Matt Kenseth, getting interviewed by the Speed Network.

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My last photo of the night.  Here were the final standings at the end of the 51st Daytona 500.

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My long day finally ended and then I had to wait in line for an hour and a half for a bus ride to the parking lot, then I had to drive all the way home. I drove all the way to Titusville on US1 because I-95 was pretty packed and not moving at full speed as far as I could tell.

It was a long hard day, but it was very interesting and pretty fun, so I think I may do it again next year.

Thanks for reading,

Kurt

Miscellaneous

Daytona 500 Pre-Race Show Practice Day

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Today I spent all day in Daytona practicing to hold a large photo banner in tomorrow’s Daytona 500 pre-race show starring country superstar Keith Urban.

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About 1500 volunteers, including myself, spent about a half the day practicing our cues and transitions at a football stadium a few miles from the track. Then we got bussed to the actual race track and spent all evening practicing again there on the grass infield where the show will be performed tomorrow afternoon (Sunday Feb 15th). The pre-race show will be aired live on FOX TV around 2:30pm Eastern time.

Below is a photo of the “Jeff Gordon Winners” banner that I get to help reveal and hold up in the air:

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Here is my view of the grandstand during the beginning of the pre-race show.  Our Jeff Gordon banner is the second photo banner to the right of the stage, from the audience and camera’s perspective.  So if the cameras pan to the right of the stage, look for me holding up the large Jeff Gordon banner.

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Here’s a photo of the performance stage that I took while we were walking over the finish line on the track after the rehearsal was over.  Keith Urban’s actual band performed tonight for the rehearsal, but a stand-in singer was used instead of Keith  Urban.

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Here is an artists concept of the field during the beginning of the show.  I circled our Jeff Gordon banner in green.

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Here is an artists concept of the field during the end of the show.  Our Jeff Gordon banner is way off to the right side later in the show.

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It was a very long day … from 7:30am to almost 8pm.  And much of it was spent out in the sun with no chance of shade.  But I had fun anyways.  I got to meet some interesting people.  We got to see the end of a race this afternoon since our track rehearsal needed to start as soon as the race was finished.  They fed us well.  Our very long day ended on a high note when we rehearsed the show perfectly and got a big pat on the back from the director and staff.

Oh yeah, I get to see the race tomorrow for free from the infield FanZone for my trouble, and I’ve always wanted to see a NASCAR race, so this was a perfect opportunity.

Science, Space, Technology

Book Review: The Seven Secrets of How to THINK LIKE A ROCKET SCIENTIST

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I don’t read a lot because reading usually puts me right to sleep. But every once in a while I get hold of a book that grabs my attention and keeps me awake through the whole thing. This book, The Seven Secrets of How to THINK LIKE A ROCKET SCIENTIST by Jim Longuski, is a very good book. It’s a very quick read too. Each chapter is very short and sweet and just tells you what you need to know and then moves on to the next topic in the next chapter. Seriously, each chapter in this book is only 2 or maybe 3 pages long.

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Click on the “ad” below to purchase this book online at Amazon.com:


Miscellaneous

DVD Review: Fireproof

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If you’re married, you need to watch this movie. My wife and I saw it when it was released to theaters and we also watched it on DVD a few days ago with some good friends. It’s a very well produced movie, although it didn’t have a very big budget. Kirk Cameron does a great job as the lead character who has grown apart from his wife. The movie is both powerful and emotional and well worth watching.

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The DVD was recently released. You can buy the DVD from your local store or just buy it online from Amazon by clicking the link below:

 

Health, Home, Property, Safety

Gravity boots on the cheap!

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I recently made my own gravity boots using parts that can be found at your local hardware or home improvement store.  I have some coworkers with severe back problems who have shown significant improvements while using inversion therapy.  So I wanted to try it out for myself, but I didn’t want to invest hundreds of dollars in the equipment without knowing whether or not inversion therapy would even work for me.  My solution … make my own to try out before buying.

Theory

The theory behind inversion therapy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_therapy) is that it uncompresses the soft disks in your spine and allows moisture back into them.  Other touted benefits are improved posture and improved circulation & oxygen to the brain. Critics of inversion therapy suggest that the touted benefits are not real and have not been proven.  Critics also maintain that inversion therapy is dangerous because of the risk of falling and also the danger imposed by the increase in blood pressure in the head and eyes.

Disclaimer

I must insist that nobody try making their own gravity boots at home.  If you fall on your head, you could get seriously injured and I cannot be held liable.  Even if you don’t fall on your head, there are other physical and physiological dangers involved, so again, please do not try this at home.

Products

I looked at the Teeter Hang Ups gravity boots to get an idea of how these things were designed (see photo).  This appears to be a very popular brand, according to Google search.  These boots appear to be a pretty simple design just from looking at the photos.  They appear to be basically a piece of plastic around your calves with a heavy duty hook attached to the plastic and foam for cushioning and buckles that tighten similar to roller blade or ski boot buckles.

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Trials

I own a typical door frame pull up bar that I’ve had for eons (see photo), so I thought I could use this pull up bar to hang upside down from.  I just needed some boots to strap around my ankles with a heavy duty hook attached securely to the boots.

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I tried making these gravity boots three different ways before I finally got it right.  My first attempt used denim from an old pair of jeans to wrap around my calves with some utility hooks bolted through the denim (see photo).

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I wrapped a hand towel around my calves first for cushioning and then the denim contraption around that and tied the denim ends together in a knot as tightly as I could.  It felt fairly strong, but when I carefully let more and more of my weight on it while hanging from the pull up bar, the denim started to tear.  Not strong enough.  Now I can see why they used plastic on the commercial product.  Denim is tough, but not strong enough to hold my weight.

So for my second attempt, I used the plastic from an old mop bucket that was laying around the garage and I bolted the same utility hooks onto this plastic and wrapped it around my legs … also around a towel for cushioning.  I don’t have a photo of this configuration because I tore it up and used the plastic for something else before taking a photo.

This configuration was definitely stronger than the denim, but the plastic torqued enough when I tried to put my full weight on it, that I didn’t feel good about the situation.  I decided that these particular utility hooks had too large of a radius which was making them rotate away from my calves instead of just pulling straight up along the plastic bucket surface.  I decided that I needed a smaller radius hook that was also very strong.  So I went shopping at my local Lowe’s home improvement store.

I found these heavy duty utility J-hooks (see photo) at Lowe’s.  They are made by Tornado and they are small yet very strong.  I also bought some nice big bolts to attach the hooks with and I also bought a 5 gallon bucket to use as the base plastic.  I also bought some squishy foam matting … the kind that cashiers stand on all day to cushion their feet.

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I had some 2-inch wide strips of Velcro laying around that I used to strap the boots tightly around my calves.  The Velcro holds very well when it has lots of surface area all the way around the whole boot to attach to.  You can see one of my fully assembled gravity boots in the photo below.

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Getting them closed tightly enough to not immediately slip and pull on my ankles took lots of trial and error, but I’ve got a system now that seems to work pretty well.  I decided that the rubberized foam matting that I bought at Lowe’s was too stiff and not really helping to hold on to my calves, so I bought some light pillow foam at WalMart and I wrap that around my calves first and then put the gravity boots on over that and the combination seems to work pretty well at holding onto my calves without allowing too much slippage.  Below is a photo of me using my home made gravity boots.

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When I first started using these home made gravity boots, I could only stand to be upside down for about 5 minutes at a time.  After a few days I could do 10 minutes, then after a few weeks I could do 15 minutes.  Usually what keeps me from hanging longer is that my legs or feet go to sleep and then start to hurt.  So I’m wondering if the commercial gravity boots are able to hold on to your calves tightly enough to not slip, but without cutting off your circulation.  Seems like a fine line to me.  Maybe the key is using the right kind of foam that can grip your calves without having to be too tight.

Conclusion

Do they work?  Do they help my lower back pain?  Well, kind of.  That’s the best answer I can give right now.  I’ve only been using inversion therapy for a couple of weeks so far, and I haven’t been able to do it as regularly as I’d like.   But sometimes after hanging upside down I can tell that my back pain has immediately stopped.  Other times, I don’t notice any difference at all.  So I don’t have any significant and repeatable short term results to share, but I’m going to try it long term and see if I can notice a long term difference in my lower back pain.

Thanks for reading.  If you have any comments or questions on this article, please be my guest.  Article comments can be read by anyone on the Internet, so if you’d rather send me a private message, just email me directly.

Kurt

Update: Click on the “ad” below to buy the Teeter brand Hang Ups gravity boots on Amazon.com: